Jasper Fforde: The Well Of Lost Plots

Reviewed by MICHAEL LARSEN

This is the third in Fforde's "Thursday Next" adventures and - let's get it out of the way now - the poorest. Lost in A Good Book and The Eyre Affair were both clever and refreshing but, alas, the wind in Fforde's sails has turned stale.

Thursday has been dispatched to the Well of Lost Plots to await her trial for changing the ending to Jane Eyre, and to hide as she's wanted in, er, Swindon. Her search for her husband Landen Park-Laine (geddit?), who may or may not be a figment of her imagination, and her avoiding a memory-destroying mythical figure (Aornis) form the shaky bones of the book.

Yes, Fforde's books take a leap of faith to read in the first place. They slip effortlessly between fiction and a kind of ultra-fiction, all the while dropping literary references and bringing fictional characters to life.

The Well, for example, is where all plots are generated and stored. Writers merely think they have invented a book, whereas it has been beamed into their heads. Characters roam around in this literary purgatory, some waiting to be put into a plot, some - imagine - consigned to bland, unimportant roles as Generics with little or no personality and little chance of graduating up the chain to become a Main Character. If it sounds confusing, it isn't really (and there is a detailed and self-serving website if you get lost).

The in-jokes are good: a meeting is called and there is a long wait for Godot, Thursday finds something as difficult "as nailing Banquo's ghost to a table", and the nursery rhymes going on strike has a certain puerile charm. But where it all falls over is that once you've got the joke, there is very little to keep you amused. Unfortunately, even in Fforde's Alice-In-Wonderland type world, we still need a story.

To paraphrase, this is the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing but, that said, it seems Fforde has finally become a victim of his own cleverness and has quite literally lost the plot.

Hodder & Stoughton, $34.99